Page 58 of Prayers for the Prickly

I watched a few people head over with their plates, but none was able to make the wheel light up. A game of horseshoes broke out and someone started playing classic rock so a few people started singing along, including Uncle Lane, who butchered the words to everything, but had an awesome voice.

“How many possibilities did you put on that wheel?” I asked.

“Fifty-three.”

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Uncle Lane sputtered as he turned to glare at him.

“Give or take one or two, yeah, I’d say there were about fifty-three on there.”

“You’re a sadist.”

“Not the first time I’ve been told that.”

Gregor’s words, coming at the exact time as the pause between songs, reached the maximum number of ears to get the absolute best reaction. Gasps, guffaws, giggles, snickers, snorts, and one,Go Gregor, were the reactions to his words, while he sputtered and tried to divert attention away from the fact that his whole face was red now.

“A sadist, huh?” I murmured as I leaned to claim his lips.

A cheer went up when we kissed, but the celebration wasn’t for us, well it wasn’t because I’d crawled into his lap to tongue fuck him and needed his fingers tangling in my hair, gripping until I could focus on the sound of the buzzer.

Oh.

Ohhh.

Someone had landed on our secret.

“Pregnant?” Aunty Eunice screeched.

“Pregnant?” Pops said, while across the sand, Gregor’s dad and uncle chuckled.

“I knew you had ulterior motives when you had me make all those last-minute additions to the renovations,” Uncle Atlas grumbled before shooting a look at Gregor’s dad. “Planning ahead my ass, you owe me twenty!”

“Get it from Storm, she bet me twenty that they were unveiling another business, I told her there was no way when we were out of Ollys to manage Gregor’s for him.”

Though they gave one another shit, it was never mean spirited, or inaccurate, they just poked at each other’s weak spots a little, probably because they had so many strengths that they never minded a bit of ribbing when they messed things up. I knew Gregor would be the first to say that he had no interest in dealing with the people part of a business and would likely have no customers at all if it wasn’t for Olly.

“So now what’s the second game all about?” Uncle Lane asked.

Everyone’s attention turned back to us, or more specifically, Gregor, who smirked and inclined his head toward the target and the table filled with colorful balloons several feet away from it.

“Easy,” Gregor replied. “Everyone is going to form a single file line. When you get to the table, pick up a ballon, throw it at the target, and see if the sand that splats out is regular colored or a neon shade. I won’t tell you how many neon bags are up there, you’ll only know the answer to that after the last bag has been thrown. Keep track of the neon colors, those will be important later.”

“Keep track of the neon?” Uncle Lane muttered.

“What are you two up to now?” Aunty Eunice asked with a shake of her head as she headed off to join the line.

Giggling, I stole another kiss before letting him help me up so we could go watch the sand toss unfold. I had a pretty good idea of what those neon colors represented. We got there just in time to see the first sand balloon splatter against the red and white target’s surface, nothing but plain sand erupting from the yellow balloon when it connected with the wood. It took several tries before the sand that hit the target was a neon hue, the bright turquoise impossible to miss against bullseye.

“Turquoise!” someone shouted.

“Is someone writing this down?”

“Who’s keeping track?”

A couple of the people who’d already gone pulled their phones out, so now we had several people keeping track as the next few balloons were thrown. All plain sand. A little disappointing. Then neon yellow splattered against the target and a cheer went up as the ones with phones made a note of the new color.

It only took one plain sand balloon before the next neon one erupted in a brilliant shower of lime sand. Half the crowd had already gone through a line that was moving faster now that people had gotten excited to see how many colors were left as well as learn what the colors meant.

A splat of bright, brilliant lavender added to the colorful mound of sand beneath the target with just a few balloons left on the table.

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